From The Ashes of Disaster
by Proton Star
Summary: In the ruins of Britain, humans try to eke out a living where the dragons cannot find them. A band of roving bikers arrive in the remnants of Birmingham, both sides have to try to reach an agreement. Prequel to 'He Who Fights Too Long Against Dragons'.
1. Chapter 1

Author: Proton Star

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, Spyglass Entertainment do. No money being made.

Pairing: Quinn/Creedy, eventually. Some Creedy/OFC in the first part.

Rating: M, especially later on.

Spoilers: None. Prequel to 'He Who Fights Too Long Against Dragons'.

Summary: In the ruins of Britain, humans still try to eke out a living where the dragons cannot find them. A band of roving bikers arrive in the remnants of Birmingham, both sides have to try to reach an agreement.

* * *

Drip, drip, drip went the clock. It was last thing on a Wednesday and Quinn trying to concentrate on the lesson despite himself. He knew how important it was to keep as much as they could of the world that was but he couldn't see any practical applications for studying art. He'd rather do more maths.

The faint sound in the distance distracted him even more. The 'prrt, prrt' sound of motorbikes was something he remembered from London, and this was similar but deeper. He wasn't the only one who could hear it, everyone else had heard it too, including the Prof, who was pretending he hadn't. Even he had to give in when the men on the motorbikes rode round the corner. There were seven of them, all unmodified engines, and although the riders all looked older than Quinn, they didn't look that old, not as old as the Prof certainly.

No one in the class was even pretending to pay attention any more.

"As it has become obvious that no further work will be done today, I hereby dismiss class." There was a general cheer as everyone raced off to see the strangers and their bikes. "Not you, Quinn. I think you'll enjoy this. Follow me." The Professor lead the way out, around the swarm of bikes to where the Mayor was talking to a man Quinn assumed was the leader of the bike gang.

Quinn tried to pay attention to what was being said, but it was difficult with these engines being near him. They would have been wonderful machines if anyone had looked after them.

"Like the look of them then?" The man spoke with a Scottish accent. He was younger than the rest of the bikers but older than Quinn. He was taller than him too, but that wasn't difficult with Quinn being short for his age. Quinn made a sound that could have been an agreement with the biker. The man pressed on. This kid was a lot less talkative than the others. He must just have been shy. "She's a beauty."

"It needs the front brake pad replacing and there's something wrong with the engine." No, the kid was just a git. Of course Creedy knew it was true; he'd been struggling since Chesterfield, but there was no need to point it out quite so loudly.

"Quinn, come over here." The older man in the pale brown suit called the kid over. Negotiations must have been finishing. Creedy went over to have a looksee.

The man in the suit was talking to the kid. "How long would it take to convert these bikes?"

"There's seven of them. If we switch a quarter," there was a pause as the man in the suit nodded, "of the metal works over, assuming we can find enough metal. I'd say four months minimum."

"In that case, gentlemen, for six months of your labour we will convert these bikes from petrol usage to alcohol usage."

The bikers reacted with a start. "Who said anything about changing stuff, and why do you think we're going to pay?" The gang certainly looked more menacing than the middle aged men and children around them, how were they going to stop the bikers from just taking what they wanted.

"So you're not having difficulties finding petrol then?" The suited man sounded doubtful. "That's good to hear. In between the dragons, the lack of new supplies and evaporation, I would have thought that the pumps might have run dry." The bastard had to have known the trouble they'd been having, thought Deacon, leader of the bikers. The only reason they'd stopped was to barter for more fuel. "Switching over to alcohol-fueled engines should avoid that. You can make your own and travel with it." The man in the suit carried on. "You can even make more of it as you travel." The community had spent a lot of time switching everything over to run on alcohol since they moved to Birmingham.

Deacon looked to be thinking it over. "Say we accept, and I'm not saying we will, what kind of work would it be?"

"Hard manual labour, I'm afraid." The bikers got the feeling that the man in the suit had been through this before and wasn't bothering to lie. "We need people to help sew the crops, and harvest some of them. Bed and board will be provided, of course." Those were distinct pluses. They'd made it through the worst of winter with their bodies and boots still intact, but it had been a close run thing. Having a six month rest up would be good for them, how hard could the work be?

* * *

End of Part 1


	2. Chapter 2

The answer had been very hard.

The gear they were pulling to plough the fields must have been designed for horses originally, or something that size, because it was too big and heavy for them and they weren't small men. They put up with it though, and worked around the problems because they were going to get better bikes out of this.

Deacon was starting to get itchy feet. No wonder, this was the longest that any of them had spent in one place for three years. Well, it was three years in Creedy's case, it could have been longer for the others, some of them had been hardened bikers before the dragons came. It was either that, or Deacon just didn't like kids.

Deacon certainly didn't like the runt. Creedy had noticed that Quinn had finally started growing but that only meant he'd gone from short and skinny to tall and skinnier. He seemed to be the Professor's pet project; Quinn always followed the Professor about, or was being told to follow him. To Creedy's eyes this was suspicious. It didn't look like they were related; the Prof had strawberry blond hair going grey while Quinn was dark. They spent far too much time together and, while no-one in Birmingham said anything, Creedy had heard stories in other places, especially with the rule of law mostly gone. The Prof obviously provided a service and these people wouldn't have been the first to turn a blind eye in the name of convenience.

You couldn't just say things like that though; you needed proof so Creedy tried to get to know Quinn, to protect him as much as anything. It was easily enough done. After Deacon forbade Quinn from working on any of the bikes, Creedy telling Quinn that he could work on his bike moved Creedy onto the best thing ever list.

Deacon was missing out; Quinn knew what he was doing. After switching the engine over, he started overhauling the whole bike. Quinn had a bike schematic, and he was drawing a new one with the details of the Creedy's bike, with notes about where it was different from the theoretical bike on the blueprints. It was a work of art, detailed and exact.

Quinn was always thirsty for knowledge, asking for information about Creedy's past, about Glasgow, everything.

"You must know something about stuff." Quinn had exhausted Creedy's rather meagre maths and science knowledge. "There must have been something you were interested in." It had been things like tv and films and football. There was no Ibrox anymore and he couldn't take Quinn there, no way he could explain how good Archie Gemill's goal had been and why it mattered so much that a Scot had scored the goal generally considered to be the best World Cup goal ever.

Quinn was still looking for information. "What did you want to do when you grew up? As a job I mean."

"I dunno." Creedy really didn't, he'd been fourteen when the dragons came, he'd been revising for his Sats. He'd known what he didn't want to be, a policeman or a doctor, and what he couldn't be, a footballer, but beyond that, nothing certain. Quinn didn't look impressed with his answer but he never was. "I bet you were one of them clever clogs who had everything planned. What did you want to be?"

"A geologist like my mother." It was the first time Quinn had mentioned his family. "It always looked really exciting. Rocks are so interesting, don't you think." Creedy murmured. He'd never noticed anything interesting about them. "They're history and science combined and you can tell so much about an area from them, what'll grow, will it be good for people to live on, all kinds. Now that I'm getting lessons I quite like engineering too, but I've still got a soft spot for rocks."

That was how the days went, Creedy would go and work in the fields, come back, watch Quinn tinked with the bike for a bit, go to sleep. Over and over. One of the first breaks to the routine was at the end of main planting. There were still a few things that need late planting, and what had been planted would need tending to, but the worst was over until harvesting. To celebrate there was going to be a party. Everyone was invited to the big meal and there was a rumour going round that certain illicit grog may be being opened especially for the occasion.

The rumour had been true and under the influence of several cups of the stuff (origin unknown, vintage uncertain, proof high) Creedy had followed Rebecca down the garden path and the two of them had enjoyed themselves. He got so caught up in Rebecca, her full breasts, creamy white softness in tight jeans and the way her hair curled round her forehead, that he stopped visiting Quinn.

Quinn had got used to Creedy being around and was narked that he wasn't coming around anymore. Quinn had always known that Creedy wasn't really checking up on his work, not after the first week or so, and while he still didn't know exactly what Creedy had been after, a friend maybe since he seemed to be closer to Quinn's age that to the rest of the bikers, Quinn was reasonably sure that he hadn't said or done anything to drive Creedy away.

He knew where Creedy was spending his time, of course, but he couldn't see what Rebecca had that was quite so fantastic. He knew what they were doing; he'd had the official talk from the Prof and the less official question and answer session from Paul Simeon but you couldn't do that all the time and it wasn't like Rebecca was better company than Quinn.

Quinn was tempted to do something to Creedy's motorbike, to teach him a lesson, but he didn't think that was fair on the bike. It wasn't the bike's fault that Creedy had some bizarre attachment to some silly woman, all pushed up, squeezed in and plucked. It made no sense.

The remaining months till the harvest passed quickly for Creedy. The settlers had driven a clever bargain, because the six months kept the bikers for both the sewing and the reaping. The harvesting was especially hard work, even with the alcohol-fuel converted combine harvesters. There'd been another party, along with it nearly being his and Rebecca's three month anniversary. They were supposed to be leaving soon, him, Deacon, Trevor and the rest. Then it was his eighteenth birthday so they waited for that. Creedy considered begging Deacon to stay until spring, he'd spent enough winters travelling to realise that it was much nicer staying in houses than in patched-up tents, but he could see them wanting to take off. Creedy was torn – on the one hand, he'd not known anything but the bike and travelling since the dragons came, on the other, he had a good thing going on here - Rebecca, constant food and not having to worry if the engine would hold out until they found somewhere to sleep and eat. He'd found companionship on the road, but he'd found something better here.

It was the Professor and Quinn that made up his mind. He'd seen them after "school" pitched out. Quinn had stayed behind and they seemed to be plotting how they were going to make the Birmingham settlement even better. That was what this place had; it had a future to it that life on the road really didn't have in the long-term.

He told Deacon and the rest of the gang, especially Trevor, that he was staying. As expected Trevor had tried to get him to change his mind, and of course, Creedy tried to get them to change theirs, this would be an easier life, but everyone had already decided what they'd rather do. A couple of the Birmingham lads wanted to go with the bikers, but Deacon wasn't having any of it. He left the bike with Creedy in case he changed his mind, which Creedy was glad of, even if he didn't think he would, but demanded a couple of spare tanks of alcohol in exchange for Creedy. At least Creedy knew exactly how much he was worth.

Creedy watched sadly as they drove off, but he had hopes for his future and his life with Rebecca.

* * *

End of part 2


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Notes: Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice remains his own. I'm just borrowing one speech :)

* * *

Rebecca dumped him two weeks after he'd decided to stay. His first thought was to get on the bike and chase after the others, but he had no way of knowing where they were and it was almost impossible to survive out there on your own. There were feral dogs, roaming gangs and the constant possibility of hypothermia and starvation. He was stuck here and knew nobody.

The bikers had been his only company for years, and he'd have to start all over again with these people.

It wasn't that the people here weren't trying, they all felt sorry for him with regard to Rebecca but they didn't know what to do with him, they all had their own lives and positions to maintain.

How he missed his old life. It had been Declan who'd pulled him out of the metaphorical rubble after Glasgow burnt down. Creedy had pulled himself out of the actual rubble on his own, but it was Declan who dusted him off and gave him a new life to replace the old one. Then again, if Declan hadn't died in that crash, would Creedy have left the gang? Creedy would have been the first to admit he didn't get on nearly as well with Deacon and, obviously the accident had changed the gang's whole dynamics. Bloody stupid patch of ice!

There was nothing left except to follow Declan's original advice and pull himself together and get on with it. There had to be a place here for a strapping lad such as himself, even if it was just digging and looking mean. However, Birmingham was still big enough to deter most raiders so it wasn't like travelling, where one of you always had to keep a watch, so it was more likely to be digging that he would be doing.

The middle of winter wasn't the time for that so Creedy was mostly helping Quinn check over the farm equipment read ready for spring. It was most a bit of spit and polishing but one of the ploughs needed a complete overhaul. Creedy could hear Quinn muttering over the engines. Normally what he said made basic sense; looking after his own bike meant that Creedy had made up for years of inattention in any lessons to do with engines, but what was quite so funny is that this time it wasn't anything to do with pistons or carburettors, but it was Quinn making an absolute hash of act three scene one.

"'If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you, '... oh what's the use, I'll never remember it."

"If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not  
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction."

"There's no way that you memorised all that."

"See, I'm not just a pretty face." Creedy'd been alright at English, back when it mattered.

"You've got to come along, to English Lit at least. It'd make the Prof so happy to have one person who's any good at it. No one else seems to give a damn and I'm just flat out terrible at English."

Creedy mumbled something at the floor by way of an answer. Quinn was always tried to get Creedy to come along to some of the lessons seeing as Creedy wasn't actually all that much older than the oldest kids in class, but Creedy still wasn't happy with the set up there, and was doing his best to pry Quinn away from the school at every available opportunity.

Because of all of that, Creedy didn't take Quinn up on his suggestion, and had to deal with a couple of weeks's worth of evil glares in response. He wondered if he'd gone too far the day that Quinn didn't turn up at all. Creedy wasn't sure what to do with himself in Quinn's absence. He had been paying attention, but he couldn't work over a whole tractor on his own.

It was then, as Creedy stared at the opened up tractor engine, that the Prof ran in, face flushed, breathing like he'd run a marathon. The Prof managed to gulp out a message in between gasps.

"He's," gasp, "gone off," wheeze, "fight," gulp, "six of them," shudder, "woods. Help him."

Creedy raced off.

There was an overgrown old factory, derelict even before the dragons came, that was used for bunking off, 'relaxing' and general misbehaviour. It was normally one of Creedy's favourite parts of Birmingham, but not right now. Because he didn't doubt what the Prof had told him, and while Quinn was probably the sort to attack people head on, most other people weren't and there were far too many places here where people could jump out at Quinn.

Also, the floor was covered in broken glass; some of it had been melted and blunted by dragon fire but most of it was still there and sharp, ripe for cutting people with.

Creedy grabbed a likely looking plank of wood, white paint peeling off it, as he scanned the surrounding area. No sign of them, no sight, no sound. He stood still, trying to register any possible place they could be. There were enough trees and thick bushes for them to hide behind, Creedy could look for hours and still not find them.

It was Jimmy Mizzen's sneezing that gave them away. They were in a small copse of trees, and Quinn was at the edge of a circle of boys, being pushed steadily back. The moment one of them broke, they'd all pile in on Quinn.

Creedy wasn't sure what to do. If he went charging in, it'd probably just make it worse. No, better to pretend to be there on an errand. He still kept hold of the battered plank though, better to be safe than sorry.

Creedy pushed away the tree branch he'd been hiding behind. "Ah, there you are Quinn. Been looking for you everywhere. Come give me a hand." Creedy turned to face the rest of them. "You don't mind me stealing him, do you?"

Of course, they couldn't say they minded so they let Quinn go. It was only a temporary solution, but at least it was working for now.

Creedy walked Quinn back to the tractor garage.

"Were you trying to get yourself killed?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Quinn's face betrayed nothing.

"Yeah, right. I suppose the Prof was just imagining that there was going to be a giant barney."

Quinn had the decency to look mildly ashamed. "He wasn't supposed to know. It wasn't like they were going to win."

"There were six of them!" Quinn stared at his shoes. "Don't get into fights like that."

"It's easy enough for you to say, it wasn't you that they were ... I didn't ask for your help."

"You don't have to. What you do have to do is know that whatever they were saying was to get a reaction out of you. They wanted you come chasing after them."

"I know." Quinn had taken the bonnet off the tractor and was starting to fiddle with the engine to make himself feel better. He was pulling hard at the parts, taking his frustration out on them. "The things they were saying about the Professor though. He doesn't deserve that. He's a good man. The only person here that is."

"He can look after himself."

"No, he can't. He's got to pretend that he can't hear them and it makes me so mad." Quinn threw a spanner across the room, where it hit the red brick wall with a clang too dull to be satisfying. "I wanted to smack the stupid smiles off their smug, fat, little faces. Because he's the one keeping us going and he shouldn't have to put up with that kind of fucking nonsense."

Creedy was shocked. He'd been on the terraces and got through school so it wasn't like swearing bothered him, it was that he'd never heard Quinn anything harder than damn before, not even when he'd dropped a whole box of pistons on his foot.

"I'm sure it'll be alright."

"I don't think it will be, and it's all my fault," Quinn had gone to pick up his spanner and put his head back into the tractor's engine compartment. Whatever the reason he felt so guilty, he didn't want to talk about it, and Creedy wasn't going to push him, because all pushing would do would be to make him clam up tightly and totally, and Creedy got the feeling that once Quinn had decided on something, his mind stayed made up.


	4. Chapter 4

Creedy popped back to the Prof's house to report what had happened.

"How is he?"

"He's fine. Last I saw he was sitting down about to eat tea." Creedy dropped Quinn off after they'd finished the days tinkering, which, after the near fight, had been a slow, tetchy business. Quinn lived with the rest of the orphans, guarded over by matrons and the rest. Creedy, despite his age, lived in a little flat not far away. He thought that the people in charge were just as glad as he was that he didn't live there. "I told him to keep his head down."

"Do you think he will?"

"Not a chance. But it ought to blow over, these things always do."

"That sounds dangerously close to 'boys will be boys'."

"It's true. Give 'em a weakness and they'll go for it. The only reason I'm not in their sights is because they know I'll smack into next Sunday if they try anything." The Professor harrumphed. "You can say what you like, it's truth. You and Quinn, you'd both be happier if you knew how to make people do what you think's right for them,"

"Not happier. More satisfied." The Professor interrupted. "We'd rather not be right about this, but we don't think our suggestions are the right thing, we know it. You're not a stupid man, Creedy, look around you. Do you really think we can maintain this for much longer if we keep on this way?"

Creedy quickly said his goodbyes after that; he knew what the Prof was like once he got going. Did he really think people were going to listen, especially when they lived comfortably the way they were? If Creedy maybe noticed that they were running out of metal, and that they'd be stuffed if a dragon did come because there wasn't a guard tower, and the few spotters they had were haphazardly scattered around the town, and were normally absent on a cig break.

It didn't help that life on the road had taught him not to be wasteful, and he could see people burning through fuel that they only had limited amounts of; using it to light up rooms that no one was in, that sort of thing.

And, if, as Creedy was being forced to admit, the Prof was right, then, no matter how much Creedy wanted the easy life, he had to help. It was only right. It didn't mean he had to like it.

Creedy's signal of surrender was attendance at the Prof's English lessons, but only them. Quinn bounded up to him after one, everyone else had gone.

"I was worried, I mean, when the Prof said he'd spoken to you about it. Everyone else he's told about it mysteriously started to avoid us."

"That's because he didn't tell me about it, he suggested I see what was in front of me." Pointedly Creedy added, "that might work better than telling for most people."

"Most people aren't going to bother to look, not if there's a chance that they won't like what they find."

"So young and yet so cynical."

That was how Creedy was inducted into the Professor's plan for maintaining the human race. It was multi-faceted, and covered every conceivable eventuality. There were plans for education, for industry, for agriculture, policing and politics. Everything was written in thumping great ledgers. Creedy did try to point out that writing what you thought were the most important documents for the future on a material that was highly flammable was a bit silly, especially given that dragons were their problem, but the Professor pointed out that there was very little else they could use, there were no computers now, and Quinn was equally certain that metal would melt under the dragon's flames just as well as paper did. Quinn also said he had no intention of attempting to write on stone tablets again.

They talked for such a long time that Quinn had to go back to the orphanage, leaving Creedy and the Professor to finish the discussion.

They'd raced through health and social policy, a quick overview that the Professor said he'd go over again someday, when Creedy had to ask why him.

"I would have thought it was obvious. Someone is going to need to back Quinn up when he takes over from me in charge of this. I have, if not the support of the general community, then at least their understanding. I helped set up the food and the machinery, they owe me and they know it. Despite all the work that Quinn's put in, I don't think they'll give him the same respect. People are very short-sighted sometimes." And Quinn was an unspeakable nerk, frequently. "I need to know that there's a plan in place."

"What, you going somewhere, Prof?"

"I have a heart condition. It's mostly being kept under control with digitalis, but I like to make sure of these things."

"Right hold on a minute, even saying I was willing to do that,"

"If you weren't, you wouldn't still have been here. You would have walked out the door four hours ago."

"Still, if you want me to go along with this, I want something first."

"Go on."

"I want to know what the deal is between you and Quinn. I figure you aren't related so,"

"I would have thought you were too clever to fall into the illogical belief of there being no smoke without fire."

"Not true, plenty of ways you can have smoke without fire; I'm just trying to make sure this is one of them."

"Do you think I'd be stupid enough to tell you outright if I were doing something ghastly to Quinn?"

"No, but I like to believe I can tell when someone's lying right to my face."

"Very well," the Professor sighed. He took a photo from his wallet. The photo was of a younger Professor, a woman who looked to be about his age and a man who had to be their son, because he looked like the woman but had the Professor's colouring. "When the dragons came, my son was working in London. He'd always wanted to go into radio and was working as an assistant producer for one of the smaller stations. When it all happened I went down to London." The Professor paused briefly. "Yes, I know. But hope is always the last thing to go. His mother, God rest her, wasn't around anymore, and I felt I owed it to her, owed it to them both if I was being realistic, to go and make sure that if there was even the smallest glimmer of hope that I could be there for him." Creedy didn't want to hear this. He knew what had to have happened.

The Professor continued, ploughing on while Creedy awaited the telling of the horror of whatever it was he'd seen. "Of course, it was futile. The station broadcast from by the Thames. They tell me that even if he'd known the dragon was coming, it would have been over before he knew about it. Still I stayed. I was already sans everything; it wasn't like I was losing anything by staying. Then something very strange happened. Quinn walked out of London."

"Nobody walked out of London." It had burned, burned for days and weeks and for all anyone knew it was still smouldering.

"Quinn did. As you can imagine, he was in a bad way." Creedy could imagine all too clearly. "They got him on a drip and fixed him up, but he wasn't communicating with anyone. He seemed to be following conversation, and they couldn't find anything wrong with him, although it was a very rudimentary medical camp. They tried talking to him, counselling him, pleading with him. Nothing was getting through. I hadn't really intended to do anything, I set up a makeshift chess set, actually trying to cheer one of the doctors up, but he came over and started playing. And we got to talking. He's very good at chess as it happens. People were astonished, I think he would have started talking again anyway, I only provided a reason. Of course they tried to find out who he was and what had happened, which only drove him back into his shell. We had a name at least. I think everyone gave up in the end, trying to find out his background, when we realised London really was lost for good, and Quinn was just unwilling or unable to talk. People started going home, and they decided I was the nearest thing he had to a suitable relative so I ought to look after him when we evacuated out. Well I say evacuated, that suggests some sort of urgency; it was more of a dispersal. I came back here and tried to get things going, and Quinn came with me. That's the whole truth."

It made sense. Creedy had been in Glasgow when London started burning, and there'd been such a sense of shock and horror, even before the other dragons awoke. If he'd been right there, right near the centre, would he have bothered to try and get the family details of an unresponsive boy, or would he have handed him off to the first suitable seeming person?

The Professor didn't seem to be lying and Creedy wanted to believe him. He probably did believe him, truth be told, but he was still going to keep a close eye on Quinn. Not that he'd really be able not to if he was going to help the two of them out, which he was going to have to do, because most of the plans had the distinct look of having been written by clever, good people, who had assumed that everyone was like them. Creedy was going to have to knock these plans into shape so that they'd actually work for real people.


	5. Chapter 5

Quinn was not paying attention in English again. It was poetry. Quinn had come to the conclusion a long time ago that he and poetry did not get along. Why couldn't it just say what it meant? He could understand the purpose of some of it, but that was mostly sea shanties and the like that either told you how or why people did things, something with a rhythm, but love poems, which they were stuck doing today, struck him as particularly pointless.

The Prof had hit on the "genius" scheme of making them all choose a poem to read out from the book of love poems he'd dug out from somewhere. The sensible boys had chosen the short ones, the girls had chosen all the old-fashioned ones, and he was stuck reading something from Ted Hughes.

It was Creedy's turn; he'd held to his word and taken to coming to English lessons, which had cheered Quinn up no end. It was nice having someone else who understood.

Midway through 'Red, Red Roses' that Quinn realised he was lost, doomed, and various other words that he normally preferred not to attach to himself. If he'd been asked to describe the situation, he probably would have blamed at least part of it on the weather, the sun shadowing Creedy, so all you could see was curls and the outlines of his features, and then when he turned slightly to face the Professor, because Creedy was one of the few in the class to feel brave enough to look up from his book when reciting, the light caught him just so. Creedy was reading out Burns's lines, and all Quinn could think was that he wished that Creedy would read something like that to him.

Quinn knew that he's enough of a freak already before taking into account that he isn't interested in women. He thought people could live with that, if he didn't also have an interest in men. He wished that it were less of a purely academic interest, but he got into enough fights as it was, anything obvious would probably mean he'd have to spend every waking moment watching his back, rather than every other one.

He knew all of that and still he wanted. It wasn't only his prick talking, for once - he'd really hated being twelve but fourteen was a lot better - it was all of him.

Creedy carried on reading, Scottish brogue rolling over Quinn, soothing and inflaming at the same time.

It was a stupid time to be having a revelation, and an even worse person to be having it about. Why Creedy? Yes, he was good-looking, what with the hair and the accent and the way his entire face seemed to crease up when he smiled. And yes, he was kind, sort of, and more importantly, he was sympathetic to Quinn's cause, his and the Professor's grand cause, which mattered so much to Quinn, but he was also his best mate. His only friend, if Quinn was being honest, because the Prof wasn't a friend, he was the nearest thing Quinn had had to a Dad even before the dragons came. He couldn't fuck up what he had with Creedy, not for anything. No matter how much he wanted whatever anything was.

Quinn rested his head in his crossed arms on the desk. His left hand hung over the edge of the desk and held onto the poetry book they were reading from, thumb keeping the right page open. He'd raise his head and read when he heard his name being called.

He knew he looked ridiculous, but it was this or walking out of the class, laughing at himself, and this was less disruptive. It could only happen to him.

Quinn hated poetry.


	6. Chapter 6

Quinn was nowhere to be found and Creedy knew that was never a good sign. When Quinn had somewhere to be officially, like school or in the workshop with Creedy, it was fine, because you knew he'd be there, and if he wasn't he'd either be ill, which was easy enough to check, or he'd be dead in a ditch somewhere, because those were the only things on Earth that were going to stop Quinn from attending. When he wasn't supposed to be somewhere though, or if the agreement was something looser, like agreeing to go and play pool with Creedy, then he had a horrible, aggravating tendency of being late or not turning up at all.

Creedy searched the usual places, and, with the way these things always went, Quinn was in the last place Creedy looked. Quinn was still in the massive dorm room that he shared with the rest of the orphaned boys. There was a reason that Creedy left that until last, Quinn spent the minimum amount of time there that he could. There was no good reason for him to still be there, not when they had planned to be at the pub.

Quinn seemed to be busy twiddling the knobs on his radio. As Creedy watched, Quinn moved the frequency dial in tiny increments, desperately searching for something. Creedy knocked on the blue metal frame of Quinn's bunk-bed.

"I can't find the BBC anywhere on here."

"You've checked the other bands?"

"Of course. Everything, FM, AM and medium wave. I even tried long wave. There's nothing there." Creedy was seized by an irrational urge to grab the radio and try for himself, but he didn't. There was no point; Quinn would have gone through the frequencies with a fine toothcomb before declaring the airwaves dead.

Even a couple of months ago, Creedy would have asked why the lack of radio signal upset Quinn so much, but now he understood. Radio Four was like cockroaches, it was supposed to survive everything. It was how the various outposts of survivors kept in touch. Still there could still be hope. Maybe the dragons had only attacked one of the masts, and someone was being sent by to fix it. Maybe, even if there had been a dragon attack on the main broadcast hub, it might only have caused minor damage and they were just putting themselves back together. Maybe. "How long as it been dead?"

"A week and a day."

Maybe nothing. The radio was down.

There was no way of comforting Quinn, there never was, but Creedy had another plan. It was a shame, he'd been looking forward to playing pool on the table now it was fixed; Fitz swore he'd taken sandpaper to the other legs so that it didn't tilt towards the top right pocket anymore.

"Put the radio down."

"But ... but ..."

"Come with me." Creedy all but marched Quinn out of the dormitory. They stopped at Creedy's place to pick up a bottle of his most potent homebrew. He'd been saving it for a rainy day and decided that today was bad enough to count.

They headed to the most deserted spot that Creedy knew of, up the hill, past the trees that had grown up around the old factory.

"So this'll make me feel better?"

"Probably not, and you'll wish you hadn't been born in the morning. But it's the best idea I've got." And there was something to it, the way you could look up at the stars when you'd had half a bottle of moonshine, and see them spin, the universe continuing on its merry and mildly nauseating way, no matter what you did, it was comforting, because life carried on, there was no need to stress out about it.

Of course Quinn might not see it like that, the drink got to everyone differently. Quinn was presently addressing the world at large, with particular attention being paid to a spot of grass about two feet away from Creedy's head, about the necessity of keeping to the master plan, and when he'd worn out that topic, Quinn moved on to his hopes and fears for the future.

Creedy wished the others could see Quinn then, full of life and fire and managing to communicate it rather than sullenly telling people what they should be doing as though his word was law. This was who he could be, and the message was the same, it was just that Quinn couldn't talk like this unless his belly was full of booze and his head was spinning. It was a shame, but it wasn't like Creedy could get Quinn soused every time he needed to say anything to people, it'd be impossible to make that much alcohol for a start.

"And it's just not fair." Quinn finally finished his rant. Creedy had tried to follow what Quinn had been saying but he'd lost the end of it, so he'd mostly stuck to making encouraging noises. Creedy would have lifted his head to reply, but it felt too heavy. Quinn sat down next to him with a thump. "None of it's fair."

Quinn lay down; Creedy put his arm under Quinn's head. There was a stillness about Quinn as he lay there. There always was though, it was one of those slightly off-putting things about him that Creedy liked. Creedy blamed it on having spent so long riding bikes, you didn't have time for wasteful movement and you couldn't talk so you didn't. He missed that sometimes, but he'd found something similar enough in Quinn.

So they lay there and the world spun and the stars twinkled.

"What are we doing here?" Quinn asked.

"We're getting by."

"We should be doing more than that."

"You've got to survive before you can do anything else."

"That's not a long term plan."

"It's what we've got." Creedy shrugged, a difficult movement given their positions.

Quinn rolled over to face him. "It's not enough." Quinn bridged the gap between them and kissed Creedy.

It wasn't the best kiss Creedy had ever had. He was drunk enough that he couldn't feel his lips properly and he worried that his kisses are too sloppy.

But it was good enough.

Creedy turned so they were face to face, and Quinn wrapped his fingers in Creedy's curls to pull them closer together. They twisted and turned to get comfortable. They didn't go any further than kissing, mostly because the amount they'd drunk was so much that kissing was only just within the bounds of their co-ordination, plus, this was actually lots of fun.

Creedy woke up with a splitter of a headache the next day. It was early, the sun was barely up. He always woke up early when he'd had a heavy night the night before. He would have felt worse, but he had Quinn to mock. Quinn had turned an interesting shade of off-white green, and was looking speculatively at the holly bush to see if he could throw up into it without it being seen and without being pricked half-way to death.

"I feel like death. I hate you and I think I wish I'd never been born."

Creedy laughed. "Definitely a good bottle then."

Quinn was half-way through rolling his eyes when they went wide and one hand gripped his stomach while the other shot up to his mouth. He raced to the holly bush and was violently sick. It carried on for a while, with Creedy making suitably soothing noises in the background when he wasn't laughing.

"Why do I let you talk me into these things?"

"Because it's fun." Quinn didn't disagree. "You done?"

"I've got nothing else to throw up." The last few heaves had just been dry retches. Quinn suspected that everything he'd eaten in the last forty-eight hours was sprayed over the bush.

"Come on then. I'd best get you sorted out." Creedy's plan featured a hair of the dog and a full fry up. Nothing like it for curing a hangover. Quinn's was worse than his and his was going to be a belter once he'd actually sobered up. Creedy walked over to where Quinn was, and Quinn slung his left arm around him. There wasn't a kiss, Quinn had been sick and Creedy knew his own mouth probably tasted worse than it felt, and it felt like it had been attacked by a roving band of unwashed socks, but Quinn leant in too close, too tightly for friends. Creedy wasn't even sure how you were supposed to deal with things like last night, they're both a lot better at doing than at talking, and Creedy didn't know how to express what he felt better than 'more please, but not if you don't want to, and not if it's making you freak out, and drunken kissing happens, and it's not a problem, but yeah, more, if you're cool with that', and he was aware of exactly how stupid that sounded. He was supposed to be the sensible one.

Quinn, on the other hand, was not together enough to panic. He was aware that he was probably going to feel this bad for the next few hours, and that there was every chance that he'd throw up again, despite not having anything left to clear out of his system. He didn't feel bad about kissing Creedy, Creedy held his alcohol better than Quinn, although Quinn wanted to believe that was only because Creedy had had more practise, and if Creedy hadn't wanted to kiss him he would have said something last night, probably would have punched Quinn in the face if he'd felt like it. It would all work out all right.

Still, he had to steel himself to say what he said next. "Once I've cleaned my mouth out, we're getting back to what we were doing last night, right?" He had the pattern of the arm of Creedy's jumper imprinted on his face from where he'd slept last night; anyone willing to let you use their arm like that had to at least be fond of you.

Creedy chuckled and kissed the back of Quinn's head. Given how often Quinn wound people up with what he said and how he said it, this time what he'd said had probably been perfect.

They walked back down the hill. Quinn would probably have needed to lean on him a little for support anyway, but he was comfortable like this, and, if Creedy slipped his hand into Quinn's right pocket, then it was just to steady him, if anyone asked. That their other hands were linked, fingers entwined, he'd have to come with an excuse for that later. No one could find out, not right now. Creedy was looking out for Quinn really, his life was difficult enough already, and, being slightly more sober now than he was last night, he knew how it would look, with Quinn being fourteen and him being seventeen, claiming to be a little older. He didn't regret a thing, his fingers were clasping as tightly as Quinn's, but there was no point in bringing trouble down on their heads unnecessarily. And Quinn would understand that, Quinn who held everything close to his chest, he'd get why. Get through today, because tomorrow might not be there.


End file.
